Intro Aside 1: WTF is up with this site? Seems to have died down considerably in terms of the jocularity it used to have and also in terms of staying up to date (e.g. almost a month after rank changes have come out nothing has been updated on a site that is supposed to be all about law school prestige)...

Intro Aside 2: There are some similarly titled threads, but before you give me the finger with "use the search function dumbass," there weren't good responses to the threads I reviewed...

So, after those intros (cough rants), will ppl in the know, or who at least think they know, help a brother out?

Is it really worth paying extra for Barbri for Cal bar July 2013? Many of my friends are taking Kaplan, and I know Kaplan gets shit on, but I liked their materials for GRE and frankly I wish I had used more of them for LSAT (they get shit on so much here for LSAT is part of why I didn't).

Also, I heard that for the state I'm in now (where I maay take bar, but am thinking mainly about CA at the moment) much of the bar material very closely resembled the Kaplan review from last year....

Give best reasons for or against, other than just "Barbri is proven standard." Thx.

1) there were lots of threads about the rankings...back when the rankings came out.

2) there are lots of threads about Barbri v. Kaplan v. whatever. tl;dr version: Barbri is fine, it's a proven quantity, it overloads you with way too much work and it's expensive. Kaplan is fine, it's a slightly less proven quantity but its bar prep is way better than its LSAT prep, no one knows of anyone having a really bad experience with it, it's less expensive than Barbri. Themis is much cheaper and people know people who've passed using it. Then there are some random minor players (baroutlines.com or something? can't remember), and people who are good with self-study [and probably statistically highly likely to pass] have used those successfully, too.

I took Barbri. I passed. I had tons of friends who took Kaplan. They passed. I don't think it really matters.

Had two friends who used Kaplan and raved about how great it was. Both passed. Lots of people go to Kaplan b/c of the MBE materials, but I think the other companies have balanced out that competition element. Personally I just didn't like Kaplan's outline and format for the MPRE, and found a big difference with the Barbri materials. I also have a couple of friends who used and passed with Themis. I am not such a great self-study person, so wanted the going to the lectures etc. every day to keep me honest. I think surely anyone can weed out the obvious excess of what Barbri throws at you so that you don't lose your mind in the process. All I would say is it shouldn't just come down to the $$. Yes, everyone is cheaper than Barbri, but failing is really, really expensive and I feel I have a better shot with Barbri. It's a truly personal call.

I took Themis and passed. It boils down to this: the law is the law, every bar prep company has the same (actual) essay topics and PT topics, which is what you can get from the bar website for free anyway. Every company puts together MPQs, and they are all very similar. Ultimately is it worth the few extra thousand to sit in a class room instead of sitting at home and watching the basically same lectures? I didn't think so and just took the cheapest one, the product is the same.